[scelerat]

Been looking for a year and a half for something full-time and permanent. No luck so far. Chopped about fifteen years off my resume, and that seemed to help get more interviews, but I think that backfired because then they were surprised by my wrinkles and bald spot and figured if I was lying about my experience, I was lying about other things too.

One thing that does not help was a string of startups I worked for which all eventually ran out of funding, so I have like four companies in four years. Also, no thanks to Patreon, who hired me to do one thing, went through a bunch of managers and could never get the ball rolling, then laid off a bunch of people nine months later. really hard to explain to a hiring manager without sounding like I'm mad and resentful. Because I'm mad and resentful.

Picking up odd jobs here and there. Small part time gigs, some substitute teaching, bar-backing and construction work.

[dxbydt]

> Small part time gigs, some substitute teaching, bar-backing and construction work.

Was in the same boat.Did the audio-to-text transcribing gig on amazon mturk. It was a tossup between that & odd jobs at Walmart at that time. Recessions in usa is pretty brutal.

If you are so inclined, I suggest getting a cert & then hitting the shady indian outfits. They always have jobs so long as you have a recent cert. Can be anything - cert in GCP, or AWS or some cloud infra work will do. You have to study...but you have the time.

[raincom]

> If you are so inclined, I suggest getting a cert & then hitting the shady indian outfits.

Large companies outsourced to Indian companies like TCS, WIPRO, Infosys, CTS, etc. The latter wants to fill some positions onsite; here, TCS, et al source resumes from these 'shady Indian outfits'.

Also another phenomenon I observed: companies want presence during the US day time, so they outsourced to companies in Brazil and other South American countries. A friend's been out of job for a year, and reached out to an ex-manager at a tech company owned by a PE firm. The manager is willing hire him through the outsourcing company but for South American wages: this company pays $60 per hour to the outsourcing partner, who takes 30% cut. So, that is about $42 per hour on 1099, without any benefits. And this contract gig may last for four months.

Welcome to the new world, where we see three classes of techies: (a) those who work for FAANG and other elite companies/firms (b) those who work for non-elite companies (c) contract work force, whose contracts last for three to six months.

[oumua_don17]

>> Chopped about fifteen years off my resume

Just a suggestion. It may instead be preferable to put a `Other Work Experience` section with a bullet point highlighting either tech skills or domain or a mix with the duration.

``` Java, J2EE, .NET

Various Companies

mm/dd/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy

Enterprise app development

- Design and implement various travel, finance applications/modules ```

edit: formatting

[solardev]

Not the OP, but I'm also old, and this is a fantastic suggestion. Thank you!

[datavirtue]

Get set up and start fishing for c2c and 1099 gigs. You will be surprised how much they pay. A lot of people are billing two clients and everyone is happy.

[tacostakohashi]

Probably you are better off putting some or all of the fifteen years back on, but abbreviate those positions down to a one sentence/line summary.

Also, work on your narrative for those startups / patreon... "I learnt a lot in a short time" or "they were having financial troubles so they had to lay off some of their best people", or something not mad and resentful.